Lobos boosters pay Weir's $490,000 buyout

Feb. 28—In keeping with the school's penchant of dealing with the bad news while masking it with the good, the University of New Mexico revealed the terms of a six-figure buyout for men's basketball coach Paul Weir while, less than two hours later, welcoming fans into its baseball stadium for the state's first live sporting event since the start of the pandemic.

UNM athletic director Eddie Nuñez said the school has negotiated a deal that will use private donations from Lobos boosters to pay Weir $490,000 in exchange for nullifying the final two years of his contract. Weir will get $245,000 in January and the remaining $245,000 in January 2023.

Nuñez also said UNM will pay two-thirds of what remains of Weir's buyout with New Mexico State, which the coach incurred after he bolted his head coaching job with the Aggies to take over the Lobos in 2017. Weir has $150,000 remaining on that buyout, and Nuñez said UNM will use $50,000 each of the next two years from funds already allocated from its athletic budget.

Weir is responsible for the remaining $50,000.

"We have worked with, and secured, all the money necessary through private funds to be able to address this as we go through this process," Nuñez said. "No state money, no new money will be used for the [buyout] as far as through our [athletic] budget. So that was an important task."

Exactly what was meant by "private funds" was a subject Nuñez sidestepped multiple times.

"We're getting into the weeds here," he said in response to a question about who the private donors were, what the timetable was for those discussions and how the process unfolded.

Nuñez said he prides himself on having solid relationships with UNM's boosters and said he listened to their concerns when they approached him about their goals for the basketball program.

"It wasn't a, 'Hey I'm bringing in five, 10 people, 15 people into a room and say, OK, you got to give me money,' " Nuñez said. "That's now how it works."

Nuñez said Weir will coach the Lobos through what remainder of the 2020-21 season, starting with the team's visit to Colorado State on Wednesday and wrapping up with an appearance at the Mountain West Conference Tournament from March 10-13.

Weir is 58-61 with the Lobos and is on pace to become the first who coached the team for more than one season to finish his tenure with a losing record since Bob Sweeney from 1959-62. This season, UNM is 10-25 — including an abysmal 6-25 record against Mountain West rivals — since the team started last season with a 15-3 record.

Nuñez said he and Weir had several candid conversations about the direction the program was taking, discussions that date back at least two years. Aside from winning and losing, the topic of a healthy basketball program had as much to do with the direction the team was taking off the court as on it.

Several Lobos had made news for misdeeds away from the game, many of which came during the 2019-20 season in which a solid start was imploded by players were constantly getting into trouble. That was followed by a tumultuous 2020 in which the pandemic prevented the team from working out for eight months, then forced the Lobos to practice and play all their games outside the state in what has been a disastrous 2020-21 season.

Nuñez insisted that finding the next coach isn't about winning percentages. He wants a coach who has a clean track record, one who is committed to developing players and, one who can energize a stagnant fan base and, most importantly, one who, as he said, owns the right "cultural fit."

"UNM is unique and I've learned every day that I'm here how unique UNM is," Nuñez said. "The fact is, do they understand the expectations, how to communicate — the pressure that this job can be? All those different factors are important. So cultural fit is going to be important to me."

Nuñez said his "phone has been blowing up" since Friday night when he made the announcement of Weir's departure. Nuñez and his staff will commence a national search immediately, intent on finding a candidate who has had some head coaching experience.

Nuñez said the same thing in 2019 prior to hiring Danny Gonzales as the football coach, and Gonzales didn't have experience as a head coach.

No timetable has been set for naming a replacement. Typically, most coaching hires are made after the NCAA Tournament. Weir was named UNM's coach on April 10, 2017, meaning the process could drag on for weeks.

UNM's next coach can expect to make the same type of salary Weir had. His base pay was $300,000 annually, but additional responsibilities such as media obligations, promoting the program, endorsement contracts and an annual retention bonus pushed the total to about $825,000.

Weir's agreement was restructured after his arrival to have his retention bonus go directly to NMSU as part of his buyout.

Nuñez said the school will likely backload the next coach's contract, meaning his pay will be measurably higher in the final years of the deal — a nod to the athletic department's ongoing pandemic-related budget crisis that threatens to leave it roughly $12 million short of its projected annual target. UNM generates roughly 75 percent of its athletic budget through ticket sales, game contracts and multimedia rights.

The shutdown caused by COVID-19 protocols cost the department millions of dollars in lost ticket and marketing revenue, forcing Nuñez to already game plan for a basketball coaching contract that gets more lucrative as things return to normal.

"This is a very attractive job," Nuñez said. "This is a flagship institution of a Mountain West school who has shown it can win championships at every level."

He said the football job attracted enormous attention from around the country. In just a matter of hours, he said, basketball had already rivaled it.

"I'm excited because, honestly, I know the kind of caliber coaches we can have here," Nuñez sad. "Now the question is: Do they fit what we're looking for?"